This invention relates generally to a dot printer and more particularly to a manually operated dot printer designed for low power consumption, and a printing method utilizing said dot printer. Conventional manually operated printers, as represented by Japanese Utility Model Laid-Open Publication No. 50-53244, produce printing under pressure or drive a printing wheel using energy stored in a spring due to applied pressure. Such printers require two or three SUM-3 cells for generating energy to select characters on the printing wheel in addition to the manually produced energy. These printers cannot be incorporated into pocket-sized calculators. Pocket-sized calculators with printers of the discharge printing type or the thermal printing type consume a great amount of energy, which is necessary for moving the printing head and feeding the printing paper. Accordingly, these printers require frequent replacement of electrical cells, and this disadvantage renders the calculators unsatisfactory from a practical point of view.
What is needed is a dot printer which is pocket-sized and has low power consumption.